Are public school teachers well paid? Does paying teachers well correlate to higher quality education? In New York state, it seems teachers are well paid, according to this 2013 data. In fact our state has the highest average salary for public school teachers, beating Massachusetts, DC, Maryland Connecticut and California. Salaries average over 75K. The nationwide average is 56K. See this blog post at Higher Ed Data Stories (lovely name for a blog…). That’s a good job, I think. Especially as teacher pay has actually declined in the past five years in many states. I’ve always wondered why the cost of an ed degree plus certification and/or your masters seemed so high, in both tuition dollars and time invested, given the relatively low pay you start at. I’m going to see how Buffalo public salaries measure up and try to compare them with local charter and private school salaries. My guess is there’s quite a range. It’s possible that competitive pay in a city like New York skews the state data…
Here’s the link to the Dept of Ed’s excel chart:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_211.60.asp
Schoolhouse Buffalo 
in the city, I think it’s unreasonable to say the average salary is $75,000. In Buffalo, teachers start at approximately $32,000 with a bachelors or $38,000 with a masters. There is a slight increase each year in teachers salaries but $75,000 would really only be achieved by the time in their 28th year of teaching. The pay scale is available online and pops up if you google “Buffalo teacher pay scale.”
There is a difference in suburban, charter, private, catholic schools for sure but generally these numbers hold true.
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